Rhamis opened the talk with the following quote by Dr Christine Jones, a respected Australian Soil Scientist.

"The most meaningful indicator for the health of the land, and the long term wealth of a nation, is whether soil is being formed or lost. If soil is being lost, so too is the economic and ecological foundation on which production and conservation are based."

Rhamis spoke about how fertility, productivity and stability is dependent upon the intelligent management of Natural Capital Assets achieved via Recommended Management Practices (RMPs) and the re-establishment of living systems.

After all he says, if people can make money out of repairing old houses, why not do it with land regeneration. In agriculture, we destroy the land to create the product. But the land is the product!

Thus, Natural Capital Asset Management approach must be based on the latest understandings of the integrated utilisation of ecology, entomology, soil science and hydrology, while also being focused on the development of processes, strategies and techniques, not products, resulting in Higher Benefit-to-Cost Ratios and Returns on Investment (ROI).

Rhamis tells us that there is a constant battle between speculative value (a quick way of making money) vs. Functional wealth (land-based investment). He refers to Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, which place our basic needs for air, food, drink, shelter, warmth, intimacy and sleep as the most important.

The benefit/cost ratio of ecosystem restoration is between 3 - 75% while the Rate of Return is between 7 - 79%. In fact the comparative ecosystem services value of organic vs. conventional agriculture is 21 - 25% higher for organic (market-value) while the non-market value (eg health, environment) is 76 - 89% higher for organic!

From the data above it's clear that small farms almost always produce far more agricultural output per unit area than larger farms. This holds true whether we are talking about an industrial country like the United States, or any country in the Third World.

The smallest farms, those of 27 acres or less, have more than ten times greater dollar output per acre than larger farms.

Another video well-worth watching is that of the Dervais family, who practice small-scale urban agriculture from their home, managing to not only feed their family every year with 6000 pounds of fruit and veg grown on 1/10th of an acre, but the community as well.

Rhamis brings up China's Loess Plateau Watershed Rehabilitation Project, funded by the World Bank, which was documented since 1995 by filmaker John Liu in a film entitled Hope in a Changing Climate (click the link to watch or view the youtube video part 1 of 6). This project covered 35000 square km and helped lift more than 2.5 million people out of poverty within the four poorest regions of China.

In fact, this entire project was accomplished with an investment of USD 500,000,000, which covered an area of 35,000 square kilometres (3.5 million hectares) - equal to USD 142.86 per hectare.

He compares this to some of the projects located in the Middle East.For instance, Abu Dhabi's Masdar City, which has invested USD 22,000,000,000 for an area of only 6 square kilometres (600 hectares), equal to USD 37 million per hectare.

Instead of benefitting 2.5 million of the poorest people, Masdar will home some 45,000 - 55,000 people and 1,500 businesses, primarily commercial and manufacturing facilities specialising in “environmentally friendly” products.

What's more, it's projected to be finished in 8 years, and it is unknown how much more money has gone into this project.

Big business is waking up to this new economic reality. “Farmland is going to be one of the best investments of our time,” philanthropist George Soros (and one of the richest men in the world) claimed a couple of years ago. But that's not necessarily a good thing.

According to the Earth Institute, Saudi is buying or leasing arable farmland in several countries, including two of the hungriest regions in the world, Ethiopia and Sudan. Daewoo has leased an African plantation in Madagasgar and countless investors are now fighting to buy land in some of the world's poorest countries.

Unfortunately, investors and multinational corporations are still thinking of profits, of feeding their vast hunger for money. And big corporations are stuck in monoculture thinking (single crop farming) or even worse GM crops which, again leads to ecological crises and land degradation.

Says a Korean farmer on the Daewoo/Madagascar land deal "It is really bad for Korean companies like Daewoo to occupy the land of foreign peoples like neocolonialists. Daewoo is bound to earn the same reputation as Monsanto or Cargill from such practices."

Murad Alkhuffash then took the floor, owner of Marda Permaculture, the farm in the West Bank, Palestine, where I did my second PDC. Palestine has always held a veiled charm, propagated by ever-elusive reports of what's happening on the ground.

Marda is located in the Salfit District, shadowed by one the largest Israeli settlements in the West Bank. Murad's work in this arid region, threatened by soil depletion, environmental degradation and the continuing occupation and annexation of fertile land, as well as marauding wild pigs who destroy crops, is testament to permaculture in practice.

International Permaculture Day: Gillian Kozicki

Next up was International Permaculture Day by Gillian Kozicki (click the link to view or right click and save to download). Held on the first Sunday of May (6th May 2012), International Permaculture Day aims to inspire people to get involved and to get connected. She encourages us to go to www.permacultureday.info to find out more.

The last day of the convergence, it would be impossible for me to do justice to everything I learnt and the fantastic people I met.

Being surounded by the majestic beauty of Wadi Rum, making friends with Ryan Harb, Guy Wauters, Roberto Perez, Tony Watkins and so many more, dancing in the desert, meditating for World Peace Day, hugging total strangers that were closer than friends, singing and marching to the beat of the same drum and sharing, learning and absorbing information - this was IPC10.

In the same democratic spirit, the next IPCs were agreed upon - Cuba in 2013 and Hong Kong in 2015.

Inspired by the work of permaculture pioneers who are regenerating degraded land, I left committed to spreading the permaculture word, to reversing the cycle of poverty and starvation in Africa, to enrich soil and empower communities wherever I am. We can all make a difference. Together, we have the power to change the world!

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Hi, my name is Melissa and I created this site together with photographer Christopher List to help spread awareness about green lifestyles and travel, so everyone can learn how easy it is to live in a sustainable way. Enjoy!

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